We are Blind

Dirk Nowitzki is a surefire first ballot hall-of-famer. At 7-feet tall, he is without doubt the greatest scoring power-forward of the post- Michael Jordan era and the finest player of European extraction to devote his entire career to the NBA. (Regardless of the folktales that surround Arvydas Sabonis's early years, the fact is he spent most of his career dominating inferior talent.)

Nowitzki has been dominant, at times, in the playoffs, as well. Most notably, he put up huge peformances in pivotal games against both the Spurs and Suns during the Mavs' run to the NBA finals in 2006. But the basketball world's most salient images of Dirk are of a man stoicly accepting defeat. The defining moments of his career are losses. First, against Dwayne Wade in those very finals that he willed his team toward in 2006, and then in 2007 against the beguiling pied piper who brought him into the league and his merry band of basketball narcoterrorists. Picture Dirk, shoulders slumped and draped with a towel, as he limps somberly off the basketball court and into oblivion for another summer. How dissonant that it's the death march that will most vividly define the career of a man whose contributions to the game have been nothing short of sublime.



He gave us something beatiful again on Saturday, scoring 33-points and pulling down 16 rebounds in game that, well, probably would would have been a victory in a world less driven to contort the man into a tragic figure. In the run up the game, we learned that Dirk was suffering through perhaps the illest personal/woman drama this side of Eric Williams. Earlier, he and we, as fans, also suffered through Kenny Smith and Charles Barkley trying to divine the source of Nowitzki's weakness that would allow him to publicly submit that Chris Andersen and Kenyon Martin are capable defenders. Perhaps it is a coincidence of biology that makes us feel that Nowitki, with his sunken eyes, and McGrady, with the ponderous, almost mournful gaze, make us beleive that they are absorbing and responding to their off court trials through what they do with a basketball in their hands. It could also be that both, quite frankly, are brilliant, and as such, play brillaintly regardless of antecedents.

Like so many others, this series will be memorialized by an image of Dirk laying prostrate before something stronger and more emotionally galvanized than he. There will be no pause for consideration of what we have lost in the cultural exchange in our attempt to interpret Nowitki. He has lost again, because he is soft and there is a void in him where a fire should burn. But if you listen, you will hear Nowitzki talking about how basketball has always been a refuge for him in a time of crisis. "If you're going through tough times in your life, basketball is always an escape," he said after the conclusion of game three. That we cannot see that fire, or that it has not yet fueled him to basketball's summit is the result of a confluence of bad luck or the conspiring nature of the gods.